A fast multi-purpose circuit simulator using the latency insertion method

With the increase in the density of interconnects and the complexity of high-speed packages, signal integrity becomes an important aspect in the design of modern devices. Circuit designers are constantly in need of robust circuit simulation methods that are able to capture the complicated electromagnetic behaviors of complex circuits, and do it in a fraction of the time taken by conventional circuit simulators. As a result, there is a constant need for and push toward faster and more accurate circuit simulation techniques. The latency insertion method (LIM) has recently emerged as an efficient approach for performing fast simulations of very large circuits. By exploiting latencies in the circuit, LIM is able to solve the voltages and the currents in the circuit explicitly at each time step. This results in a computationally efficient algorithm that is able to simulate large circuits significantly faster than traditional matrix inversion-based methods such as SPICE. In this work, we propose the use of LIM as a multi-purpose circuit simulator. While LIM originated mainly as a means for performing fast transient simulations of high-speed interconnects characterized by RLGC elements, we aim to provide additional derivations of and modifications to LIM in order to formulate a robust circuit simulator that is both fast and accurate